For a cheese-eating surrender monkey, Guilhem Alandry is a brave man. A Frenchman, and plainly a bit of a lefty, Alandry is heading to George Bush's hometown of Crawford, Texas. Not just for a quick visit, not just to buy a Bush mug at a souvenir shop and head back out. Alandry wants to move in - temporarily - with a Crawford family and document their lives at a critical point in the town's history, the 2004 presidential election.

Alandry is one-fifth of Documentography, a London-based collective of photographers that will fan out across the US and capture the lives of five American families in the week before the election and its immediate aftermath. Guardian Unlimited will carry their project as part of our US election coverage.

Only one of the photographers, the Brit Muzi Quawson, had a pre-arranged agreement to move in with a specific family. She will be in LaGrange, Georgia, living in a multi-generational household that runs the political spectrum from conservative to liberal.

The others will be relying on the openness and hospitality of their host communities to find a family willing to live for a week with cameras, audio recordings and a foreigner with a possibly very different world view.

Brazilian Eduardo Martino flew into San Diego on Wednesday, in search of a Hispanic family with military connections. Danish photographer Anna Kari - she came up with the idea for the project - left for Tallahassee, Florida on Thursday. And finally Magali Corouge is off to the battleground state of Ohio.

Sitting in their cluttered, cosy Hackney flat, surrounded by souvenirs from trips to Africa, Alandry, Corouge and Kari are full of enthusiasm for the towns they hope will take them in.

All three of them are typing away into their laptops as we chat. What was the name of that factory in Canton, Ohio that just laid off all those workers? Exactly how many people live in Crawford, Texas - is it 500 or 700? Tap, tap, tap. They have studied their target towns reverently and have constructed broad profiles of the types of families they hope will take them in for a week and a half.

Corouge wants to document people affected by the 10% unemployment rate that has ravaged Canton. Most have lost their jobs in the last three or four years, she says. She hopes to find an extended family living together out of economic necessity, perhaps a working couple that have moved back in with their parents to make ends meet. But with just enough space left over to accommodate a sympathetic French photographer for a short time.

Kari chose Tallahassee because it suffered most from governor Jeb Bush's move to purge criminals from the state's voter rolls before the last election. Thousands of Floridians were disenfranchised by lists that erroneously connected them with criminal records, and a disproportionate number of those voters were African-Americans likely to vote for Al Gore. "I'm hoping to find someone upset about what happened four years ago, someone active in the community," says Kari.

Alandry has wanted to visit Crawford since the French refused to join the invasion of Iraq.

"In Crawford they were the first to take up freedom fries and they really hated the French," he recalls almost fondly. But that was two years ago, and the people of Crawford have seen a nonstop parade of international VIPs and grown accustomed to media tents on their main street.

He talks excitedly about the German immigrants that founded the community in the 1800s and the modern conflict of Democrats and Republicans coexisting in a small town made famous when George and Laura Bush bought a ranch there in 1999.

Documentography hopes its project will counterbalance the mainstream media coverage of the elections, which has drowned out the sound of ordinary Americans discussing the impact of politics on their lives.

"I think political debate is a lot more aggressive in the US; it's like a stageshow. People are very radical in their opinions. Or maybe we don't hear from the middle ground so much," Kari says. "I feel like I have to go down to local paper level to hear people's voices."

Each photographer will post 10 pictures each day on Guardian Unlimited, along with accompanying text and three minutes of sound.

"It could be two neighbours talking about who they'll vote for, or ambient sound from a football stadium," Alandry explains. "We won't constantly be asking the families, 'Who are you voting for? What about Iraq?' It will be much more about daily life, about sitting around a barbecue with a beer."

Assuming the famous Texan hospitality comes to Alandry's aid and lands him with a home in Crawford for the week, he is still worried about what will happen the day after the election.

"If Kerry wins, I don't know what will happen to Crawford. For that village it is a big deal," he says. Crawford, he notes, was a dying community before the Bush ranch put it on the map. His presidency has created an unexpected revenue stream, one that might be cut off if the White House changes hands.

In the meantime, though, Alandry just needs a nice Texan family to feed him up.

· The Documentography project will run from Tuesday October 26 to election day. The group's website contains more information about the photographers and their past projects, as well as a link to their magazine, Issue.